Minnesota United players knew teammate Collin Martin is gay, but Martin told the world on Friday before the Loons celebrated the LGBTQ community with Pride Night at TCF Bank Stadium.

It was a welcome, positive move, and despite support from family, friends and teammates, a brave one. These are odd times for the United States. While more and more professional sports teams — long the bastions of straight male culture — are recognizing the diversity of sexual identity at the corporate level, everyday violence and political maneuvering tell us we still have a long way to go.

“LGBT kids are bullied at a higher percentage,” said Billy Bean, a former major leaguer and a Major League Baseball vice president and special assistant to Commissioner Rob Manfred. “Some kids can’t conceal what they are like I was able to do. So, I want to be protective of that. But it’s just a part of it.”

In 1995, Bean was an outfielder and first baseman finally finding his footing with the San Diego Padres when his partner died from HIV-related complications, and was told he was likely to follow. It was easier for him to quit baseball, he said, than tell his parents he was gay.

It’s a decision that Bean, 54, still regrets.

“It just seemed like a better decision, and it didn’t take long for me to know I’d made a bad one, because baseball moves right along without anybody,” he said. “Baseball is a snapshot in time.”

What’s the snapshot tell us now?
Billy Bean, Major League Baseball vice president of Social Responsibility & Inclusion, throws out the ceremonial first pitch to Seattle Mariners’ Felix Hernandez before a baseball game between the Mariners and Milwaukee Brewers Friday, Aug. 19, 2016, in Seattle. The Mariners were celebrating LGBTQ Pride Night at the ballpark. (AP Photo/Elaine Thompson)

The Lynx celebrated Pride Night last weekend, and the Twins will have one on July 9. The Vikings this month held a symposium on LGTBQ issues. These things resonate. They move the conversation forward.

Still, Bean suspects it will still be some time before a major league player “comes out.”

“It’s funny, when I first came back to baseball, I thought we were really close,” he said. “And then, right now, I think you have a lot of athletes who are much more secure being who they are, and they may have their family network, but it is a huge consideration to bring that out to the world, because people are going to change around you.”

Bean was in the Twin Cities on May 24 as part of MLB’s anti-bullying program he spearheaded called “Shred Hate.” A partnership with ESPN, the initiative was started this season in three metropolitan areas, the Twin Cities, Chicago and Washington, D.C. Among the schools employing the initiative last year were three St. Paul middle schools: Eastern Heights Elementary, Washington Technology Magnet and Jennings Community School.

Bean publicly opened up about his sexuality in 1999, three years after he retired. The late Glenn Burke was openly gay among teammates with the Dodgers and A’s in the 1970s and later acknowledged that bigotry shortened his career.

“For me, it’s not about how many players are out, or if they come out,” Bean said. “If we have one player come out tomorrow, that doesn’t mean baseball has an A-plus record on inclusiveness. But if we can change the culture, and our players and managers aren’t saying derogatory words about women, or about LGTB, or God forbid, racist comments, then we’re moving in the direction that will allow kids like that to not even think about it.”

Bean feels racism has been mostly conquered in the melting pot of professional sports, where being a “good teammate” is the only thing that matters. He suspects it would be the same for a gay athlete, but there are so many external factors to take into consideration that becoming public about it will be life-changing.

It would be a decision, he said, “to make their career about that.”

The challenges of LGTBQ kids are part of the Shred Hate campaign, Bean said, but only one part. It’s a program about inclusion born of his early work with organizations such as the Stand Up Foundation. Bean routinely talks to MLB’s 30 teams about inclusion, and he wants active players to be involved. Byron Buxton, for instance, did a PSA for Shred Hate and was part of a May 24 assembly for participating schools.

“To be in that clubhouse now is a tremendous privilege,” he said, “so we have to remind them that they can all be ambassadors.”

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